Meehan set to miss entire league campaign
Ó Flatharta’s selector Martin McNamara revealed the management team are not expecting to see the Caltra man, who has been named as one of Galway’s three captains this year, to line out in any Division One games as they give him as much time to recover from knee and ankle injuries he picked up last year. “Michael’s on holiday in Australia at the minute and he won’t be back until the first or second week of February,” said the 1997 All-Ireland winning goalkeeper McNamara.
“He’s still recovering from injury and at the moment we wouldn’t see the league as an option for him.”
As Meehan remains sidelined, the other two captains named by Ó Flatharta — Finian Hanley and Kieran Fitzgerald — will share the skipper duties in the National League. McNamara also revealed Pádraic Joyce is expected to return to the camp in the next few weeks but will do some pre-habilitation work before taking a full part in training. No date has as yet been put on the 33-year-old Killererin man’s return to action but it seems likely he will play some part in the county’s April league games.
McNamara, who coached his club Corofin to a Connacht title in 2009, is just settling into his new position alongside Ó Flatharta and fellow selector and former team-mate Seán Óg de Paor. Ó Flatharta will finalise his squad for their NFL Division One campaign once their FBD League interests finish up this month. They continue on Sunday when the Tribesmen face NUI Galway but McNamara admits it’s nigh on impossible to judge the form of players at this time of year.
“It’s still very early,” he noted. “We only got together a week before the FBD game last weekend and you can’t really judge any player.
“To do that would give you aninaccurate idea of where the player is at. Not only that, it would be unfair because football is a completely different game now to what it will be like in five months’ time.”
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